A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
Science teaches us to look upon the body as a thinking machine. As a
mental mechanism it exhibits the divine being as an inventor, who has
produced a machine as much superior to Watt's engine, as that engine
is superior to a clod or stone. In this divine mechanism all intricate
and enduring machines are combined in one. Imagine an instrument so
delicate as to be at once a telescope and microscope, at one moment
witnessing the flight of a sun hundreds of millions of miles away,
then quickly adjusted for seeing the point of the finest needle!
Imagine a machine that at one and the same moment can feel the
gratefulness of the blazing fire, taste the sweetness of an orange,
experience the æsthetic delights of a picture, recall the events in
the careers of the men the artist has delineated, recognize the
entrance of a group of friends, out of the confusion of tongues lead
forth a voice not heard for years, thrill with elation at the
unexpected meeting! The very mention of such an instrument, combining
audiphone, telephone, phonograph, organ, loom, and many other
mechanisms yet to be invented, seems like some tale from the "Arabian
Nights." Yet the body and brain make up such a wondrous mental loom,
weaving thought-textures called conversations, poems, orations, making
the creations of a Jacquard loom mere child's play. The body is like a
vast mental depot with lines running out into all the world.
Everything outside has a desk inside where it transacts its special
line of business. There is a visual desk where sunbeams make up their
accounts; an aural desk where melodies conduct their negotiations; a
memory desk where actions and motives are recorded; a logical desk
where reasons and arguments are received and filed. Truly God hath
woven the bones and sinews that fence the soul about into a mechanism
"fearfully and wonderfully made."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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